Heroic and Team Vitality both won their semifinal matches on Saturday at the Intel Extreme Masters Rio event in Rio de Janeiro.
Heroic swept Natus Vincere 2-0 and Team Vitality knocked off Cloud9 2-1 as both squads punched their ticket to Sunday’s grand final. The winner of that match will win $100,000 and qualification to the $1 million Intel Extreme Masters Cologne scheduled for July 25-Aug. 6 in Germany, while the runner up receives $42,000.
The $250,000 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament began with 16 teams divided into two groups for the double-elimination opening phase. Each team’s first match consisted of a single map, while all other matches were best-of-three.
The group winners qualified for the playoff semifinals. The group runners-up moved into the playoff quarterfinals as high seeds, and the third-place finishers in each group started the playoff quarterfinals as low seeds.
The quarterfinals and semifinals are best-of-three and the grand final on Sunday is best-of-five.
On Saturday, Heroic opened the match with a 25-22 victory on Overpass before picking up a 16-9 win on Ancient. Rene “TeSeS” Madsen led Heroic, an all-Danish squad, with 61 kills and a plus-12 kills-to-deaths ratio, while Ukraine’s Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev paced the losing side with 55 kills and a plus-3 ratio.
After dropping the opening map, Inferno, 16-6, Vitality prevailed on Vertigo (19-16) and Overpass (16-9) to keep its title hopes alive. Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut of France supplied a team-high 67 kills and a plus-21 K-D for Team Vitality. Russian Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov was Cloud9’s only player to record a positive K-D (plus-25). He finished with 77 kills.
The playoffs conclude Sunday with the grand final:
–Heroic vs. Team Vitality
Intel Extreme Masters Rio prize pool
1. $100,000, berth in IEM Cologne
2. $42,000
3-4. $20,000 — Natus Vincere, Cloud9
5-6. $10,000 — FURIA Esports, BIG
7-8. $6,000 — Ninjas in Pyjamas, OG
9-12. $5,000 — 9INE, The MongolZ, Fnatic, FaZe Clan
13-16. $4,000 — MOUZ, Imperial Esports, 9z Team, MIBR
–Field Level Media